


envy the birds

by lacquer



Series: love + fear [4]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fist Fights, Identity Reveal, Missing Persons, Mugging, Reunions, a brief hostage situation with a gun, the tags make it sound bad but I'm just trying to cover everything, weapons as gifts of affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23503573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacquer/pseuds/lacquer
Summary: “Come with me,” he says. When Wonwoo doesn’t move, he takes a step towards her and lowers his voice. “You know Black Cat woul—”“Shut up.” Wonwoo cuts him off before he can get any further. “You have no idea what she would want.”
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Series: love + fear [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662301
Comments: 15
Kudos: 60





	envy the birds

**Author's Note:**

> this is yet another fic set to a marina song, this time handmade heaven! most of the inspiration was taken from the lines _I carry along a feel of unease/ I want to belong like the birds in the trees/ I sit on my own, look over the town/ The skyscrapers glow like they'll never fall down._ the title is from the same song
> 
> loosely based on existing comic book lore, with black cat!jun (ty rae), but you really don't need to know any background because i do not either. special thanks to len not only for suggesting wonhui but also offering to consult about dc backgrounds! this ended up as an unintentional crossover between marvel/dc, which is something i think is a bad thing? please comic stans do not come after me

Wonwoo thinks that if she were a different kind of person, she would probably not be in this situation. The gun goes off three feet from her face, temporarily deafening her, and she curses. Thank god, the criminal in front of her has a terrible aim. The bullet chips into the alley wall behind her, and she lunges, baton clocking him in the temple. 

He crumples like a sack of bricks, and Wonwoo takes a deep breath. Her back aches, one long line of strained muscle, and her fingers have been cramping for hours now. She’s about to stretch out her arms, when a voice behind her says “Freeze. Don’t move or I shoot him.”

Fuck. 

The man must have had a friend. When Wonwoo had run into the alleyway she hadn’t paused to assess the situation, had only seen a lone man pinning a teen up against a wall. Action followed like instinct.

Wonwoo can’t afford to close her eyes, but she _wants_ to. She didn’t use to make these kinds of mistakes. She also didn’t use to be alone. Right now though, neither of those things matter. What she has is a hostage situation going on six feet behind her back, and no backup on the way.

She does as instructed, freezing in place. A breeze swirls through the alleyway and she swears she can hear breathing behind her. It sounds frantic. 

“Good. Good.” Another breath from behind her. “Now set your batons down. Slowly.” Wonwoo tries to remember if she has _anything_ that will help her now. Her in-ear radio sits uselessly in her apartment, twenty blocks away, and she doesn’t have so much as a smoke bomb on her person. 

When the cool weight of her batons hit the ground, she swears she feels their loss like a limb. 

“Turn around.” Wonwoo does so, pulse rabbiting in her throat. It’s been a long, long time since she’s screwed up this badly. 

The alley squeezes the three of them far too close together, claustrophobic for all that it’s nearly eight feet wide. Wonwoo watches the shadows and curls her fingers into fists. 

The mugger’s friend is dressed head to toe in black and tan, a mask of some sort covering his mouth and nose. A gun is shoved up beneath the chin of the boy in his grip. They’re both trembling. “Good. Now walk past me and out of the alley slowly. No funny business or the kid gets it.”

Wonwoo walks forward, feet crunching over gravel bits on the road. When she passes by the man he tenses even more, shoving the gun up harder beneath the boy’s chin. Her ears pick up a faint whimper and Wonwoo’s teeth clench hard enough to snap bone.

When she makes it to the end of the alley, she stops. She can’t leave. She can’t stay.

She’s just about to turn around, when behind her comes the rustling of heavy fabric and a thud. Wonwoo whips her head around quick enough to see the man go down, gun skittering across the alleyway. The boy stumbles away, unharmed.

A figure cloaked in black rises from a crouch and raises his hand. A whirl of black metal slaps into his palm and he tucks it away in one smooth motion, turning to cuff the man in the same breath. He moves like water, economy of motion made lethal. 

Unfortunately, Wonwoo knows him. 

“Batman,” she says, crisp and to the point. 

“Sparrow,” he returns, equally succinct. A look towards the man on the ground speaks volumes, even through his mask. He turns towards the boy, now shaking on the ground. “Young man, are you ok?”

Wonwoo takes a deep breath and goes to retrieve her batons. Her muscles are twitching every so often, and the edge of adrenaline in her blood is souring into a headache. It’s a suitable end to a bad week. A bad month. A bad year.

They walk the boy back to his apartment in silence and send him inside with a warning to be more careful. Batman had taken the gun and tucked it in one of his many pouches. She doesn’t know what happened to the man he cuffed, or to the one she had knocked out, for that matter.

When the boy disappears between the doors, she moves to step away, only for Batman to catch her wrist. “Sparrow, are you all right?”

“What do you mean?” Wonwoo shakes him off and takes a step back. 

“That’s not the first scrape someone has had to drag you out of recently,” he says. It’s irritatingly steady. “I would be more than willing to provide you back up should you need it. You know I would.”

It burns up her skin, this kind of acknowledgement. It salts untended wounds, to remember that she no longer has backup of her own. “I’m fine,” she bites out. And then she winces, because that movement had pulled straight through her sore back and right up to her neck.

Batman tilts his head—a movement that is over-telegraphed to compensate for the mask—and doesn’t disagree. Wonwoo wants him to. She wouldn’t have gotten away with that a year ago. Ju- Her partner would have pressed. When a car pulls up to the curb a minute later, Wonwoo isn’t surprised. She’s well acquainted with Batman’s habits by now. After all, he's the only one who's been remotely helpful in her search. 

“Come with me,” he says. When Wonwoo doesn’t move, he takes a step towards her and lowers his voice. “You know Black Cat woul—”

“Shut up.” Wonwoo cuts him off before he can get any further. “You have no idea what she would want.” 

Batman winces but doesn’t step back. “Come back with me and rest. I think I have a new lead.”

Wonwoo thinks of her own apartment, blocks away in the cold winter wind. She thinks of the cork board that has completely taken over her bedroom wall, cluttered with old information. Nothing new in weeks. “Fine,” she says. “This better be a good lead.”

Batman looks around and steps towards the car. “Just promise not to panic.”

Wonwoo gets in the car and doesn’t promise him shit.

* * *

Wonwoo dislikes Batman immensely. It’s in every little gesture he makes in the field, and most especially in the way he steps on wounds she doesn’t allow to heal. 

Lee Jihoon, on the other hand, is a different matter. When Wonwoo swings the door of the car shut, Batman takes off his mask and becomes just a man. A man juggling a thousand metaphorical knives at once, but at his core, a man. He has tired eyes.

The car purrs to life, and rolls down the street. Wonwoo watches the man across from her instead of the scenery outside. 

Lee Jihoon is still dressed in black, but Wonwoo can see the early wrinkles haloing his eyes now. He has taken off his cloak, leaving it in a pile next to him. His gloves have been peeled off as well, tucked neatly into his belt. He has nice hands for a superhero. Elegant fingers and clean nails. Wonwoo peels off her own gloves and stares at her palms. 

Her nails are clipped short, skin cracking on the back of her hands. There’s a faint bruise over part of her palm and no few scars. They’re ugly hands but they do the job.

When she still ran with Black Cat (No. She is in Lee Jihoon’s car. Wonwoo will call her Jun, if only in the safety of her own mind), the other woman had been enamored with her hands. The first time they had met on the same side of a fight, Jun had caught them up and brought them to her face, uncaring of how Wonwoo's fists curled in warning. “You punch really well!”

Wonwoo had punched Jun in the face before. More than once. She had shot her an incredulous look, and Jun had just grinned. “I know how to appreciate nice things and these,” she tapped the hands she had in her grip, “are lovely. Very capable.”

On the fourth anniversary of working together—a date that Wonwoo had nearly forgotten in the midst of busting a multi-tier drug smuggling ring—Jun had gifted her a set of brass knuckles, perfectly sized to Wonwoo’s hands. She had slipped them on her in a dark alleyway, eyes twinkling like she was thinking of other kinds of rings as well. Wonwoo still has them tucked in her pocket, wears them like a good luck charm that can crack bone. 

Right now, her fingers are curled around the metal in her pockets, fingers slipped through the warm and familiar rings. A storm rumbles above the city, and Wonwoo allows herself the luxury of closing her eyes. 

* * *

Once upon a time, Wonwoo allowed herself one wild and reckless thing. Standing atop a skyscraper, looking over Gotham, she had whipped off her mask and stared Jun in the eyes. A scuffle three blocks and six bruises ago had knocked the wind out of her and here, with her secret identity a ghost in the wind, she felt it leave her again. 

Jun had been sitting with her feet over the edge of the building, posture laughing at the idea of gravity or safety codes. When she looked up at Wonwoo, her eyes had gone wide and panicked. Her own mask was securely on her face. 

“What are you doing?”

“My name is—” Wonwoo only got that far before Jun pounced, hand slapping over her mouth. 

They landed with Wonwoo on her back, Jun crouched over her. The sleek curtain of her hair fell around them both, hiding their surroundings from view. More desperately, she hissed, _“What are you doing?”_

Wonwoo ripped her hand off her mouth and grabbed the collar of Jun’s suit. “My name is Jeon Wonwoo. I’m telling you because I think you should know.”

Jun shook her head. “Don’t you know who I was? I could have figured that out any time. You shouldn’t just trust people darling, you don’t even know my full name—”

“I live on the corner of Cherry and 4th,” Wonwoo continued, inevitably. “I work at the Gotham Observer. My current story is boring as hell research into public infrastructure, but it pays. I’ve been thinking about getting a cat but I’m worried about being home enough.” _Come home with me this time. Don’t leave like you always do._

Jun’s fingers spasmed next to her head, claws digging into the concrete. In a gesture that Wonwoo knew was a distraction, she had kissed her, filthy and wet, one hand threaded into her hair. Wonwoo was only a woman, not a saint; she kissed Jun back. 

And then Jun left without another word. 

Wonwoo had stared over Gotham, lights twinkling below her like a thousand heartbeats. Ivy choked her throat and she sat down heavily. 

Jun did not come back the next day for patrol. Nor the next. 

Wonwoo has not seen her for a year now, and each successive day has been colder than the last. Now she sits on skyscrapers alone, and envies the birds swooping around her head. 

They, at least, know how not to fuck up a good thing.

* * *

Jihoon’s car pulls up to his mansion in silence and he gets out, not waiting for her before walking away. Wonwoo shuts the door even if she’d rather slam it, and stalks after him, hands still wrapped around her brass knuckles. 

Just outside the door to one of his sitting rooms, Jihoon turns around. “Don’t panic.”

Wonwoo resists the urge to curl her lip. Keeps her face blank. “When have I ever?”

Jihoon doesn’t dignify that with a response. He opens the door and steps back. “Take a look. I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.” With that ominous statement he walks away, leaving Wonwoo alone.

Jihoon’s mansion has always been intimidating. The building was inherited from his family, and Wonwoo sometimes feels nervous even stepping on his carpets for fear of ruining them. She feels like this now as she pushes open the door and steps inside, looking around for whatever Jihoon wanted her to see. 

It doesn’t take much effort. There in the middle of the room, sitting on a couch is a woman wearing fitted slacks and an open collared white shirt. She turns around at Wonwoo’s entrance, auburn hair spilling over her shoulders. Her face almost rings a bell, like looking at some familiar landscape, now observed through fog. 

When Wonwoo walks further into the room, she stands, walking towards her. 

“Wonwoo.”

Her name sounds familiar in this stranger’s mouth, like something practiced in front of a mirror over and over again, worn smooth and round as a stone. Wonwoo tenses. She’s still wearing her mask. “Who are you?” 

The woman makes a little pained noise and brushes back her hair. Wonwoo isn’t paying attention to her struggle for words, though. Glittering in her ear, is a familiar earring, a small stud that Wonwoo knows. She’s seen it up close before. It's responsible for Black Cat's supernatural balance. Before the woman can speak at all, she says, “Jun? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Jun replies. Wonwoo feels like a struck bell, the words echoing around her head. Jun looks… good. She looks healthy, clothing settled neatly in place. There’s gold at her throat. She looks like she hasn’t spent a day worrying over Wonwoo's safety.

The reverse is not true. There are months calcified around Wonwoo’s heart, felt with every heavy beat. 

Very abruptly, Wonwoo realizes that she is furious. Her fingers clench around the brass knuckles in her pocket. “Where were you?” She lunges towards Jun and throws a punch, right at her face.

She doesn’t pull it at all; there’s an instinct in her, born from years fighting at Jun’s side, and even before then, from back when they were enemies, that tells her that Jun can dodge her blow without issue. It’s a shock, therefore, to feel steel connect with Jun’s chin. The other woman only leans back enough that the hit doesn’t break her jaw entirely, but Wonwoo still hears her teeth snap together. 

They tumble down to the ground, and Wonwoo feels it more than hears it when Jun’s back hits the floor. Wonwoo catches herself on one hand, an action that makes her entire back flinch.

“Well, this is familiar,” Jun says. Her hair is tangled beneath her head. Add in a black leather suit and a few police sirens in the background, and it could almost be seven years ago, where they had first met. Wonwoo had tackled Jun straight out of a window, interrupting her latest heist. 

If anything, the reminder only serves to make Wonwoo angrier. She makes an aborted motion to punch Jun again, and the other woman catches her wrist. “Wait, Wonwoo let me explain.”

“Explain what?” Wonwoo tries to shake Jun off. The anger is quickly collapsing in on itself, shock like a punctured balloon. She wants to get up and leave the room just as much as she wants to grab Jun’s shoulders and demand she never leave again. 

Jun takes something out of her pocket with her free hand, and shows it to Wonwoo. It’s a piece of paper, half folded. Wonwoo only catches a bit of the text, but it’s clear enough: a police report. When Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, Jun shakes it out and slowly takes her hand off Wonwoo’s wrist. “Here, read it.”

Wonwoo settles back on her knees and then, spitefully, moves all the way back until she’s sitting on Jun’s thighs. The other woman isn’t going anywhere. When she takes the paper and starts reading, Jun sits up as well, forcing Wonwoo to rearrange herself into her lap. 

The piece of paper is worn, as if Jun had been folded and refolded a hundred times. Wonwoo scans it, not really processing the words until she hits the phrase “...in cooperation with Black Cat, temporary consultant…”. She takes a second and starts from the beginning. 

It’s a record of arrests, the only similarity between them all the fact that Black Cat had been listed as a consultant for each of them. At the very end is a short handwritten note. _Consider it done. Your new ID is already in the system. I can’t say it was a pleasure working with you, but I wish you the best._ The signature is a scribbled mess, but Wonwoo thinks she knows who it was.

“You started working with the chief of police?” The question wobbles. Wonwoo is _so_ confused. Her partnership with Jun had always operated in a grey area; Wonwoo got someone to watch her back, and the police turned a blind eye to the fact that Black Cat hadn’t paid any time behind bars for all her various thefts. 

Jun blows out a breath like she’s coming up for air. “You didn’t give me much of a choice, darling. What was I supposed to do when you gave me your life like that?” She reaches up to push back Wonwoo’s mask. It’s only when Jun’s hand settles on her cheek that Wonwoo notices it’s shaking. “You offered me something I didn’t think I’d ever want.”

“And what’s that?” Wonwoo asks. She shifts forwards a bit, pressing their bodies more firmly together. Every point that Jun touches feels warm, the sensation almost unreal. She’s been searching for months, and here Jun is. Alive. 

“An apartment on Cherry and 4th,” Jun says. “A girlfriend working at the local newspaper. The chance to adopt a cat.” Wonwoo notices her eyes watering. “You’ve absolutely ruined me, you know. I’m a thief, but all I want to steal is the key to your heart.”

Wonwoo hits her shoulder, but it’s weak, barely more than a push of her hand. “We’re going to have to talk about this, you know. You could have _talked_ to me instead of running off.”

“I will,” Jun says.

“And you’re going to have to figure out how to convince my landlord. She doesn’t like me at all.”

“I will.”

“And you’re going to have to split utilities with me and figure out what to name the cat and help me build a bigger bed and…” Wonwoo trails off, knocks her head into Jun’s. She started crying sometime in the past few minutes, ugly tears that blur what she's seeing before her.

“I will.” Is all the other woman says. She reaches up and takes Wonwoo’s hand, easing off the brass knuckles. “My name is Wen Junhui. I’m back, darling.”

“Junnie,” Wonwoo says, turning until she can press her face into Junhui’s neck. “Don’t you dare leave again.”

A hand smoothed down her back. A kiss pressed to Wonwoo’s head. “I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.” 

Outside the sun has not yet risen, but Wonwoo swears she hears a bird singing.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, i'd love it if you left comments/kudos! if you'd like to chat, i'm on twitter/cc @lavenderim
> 
> (fun fact, the parts of this not written to the marina song in question were written to jolin tsai's 呸 album on loop)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You're a Pond and I'm an Ocean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135790) by [lovefoolthatsme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovefoolthatsme/pseuds/lovefoolthatsme)




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